Detroit is closer to figuring out how to address a hole in pension funding that is far larger than it had anticipated when it exited from bankruptcy.

The city in March put out requests for proposals seeking national firms with expertise in public pension plans to advise the city on how best to address a $195-million payment to the city's two pension plans that comes due in 2024, under terms of the city's exit from the nation's largest Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy.

John Naglick, the city's deputy chief financial officer and finance director, told the Free Press that a committee of top officials in the Duggan administration reduced a pool of proposals to three and recently recommended one firm to the city's CFO, John Hill, who approved the suggestion.

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Detroit's bankruptcy exit plan, approved in December 2014, gave the city breathing room before it had to make payments to its two pension plans — the General Retirement System and the Police and Fire Retirement System — on the assumption that the city would be better able to pay once its tax base recovered post-bankruptcy. The bankruptcy blueprint called for Detroit to begin making pension payments with a $112.6-million installment in 2024.

The city now says that actuarial assumptions used in the bankruptcy were inaccurate and outdated. City officials said that new actuarial reports last year by the Gabriel, Roeder, Smith & Co. firm project Detroit may have to pay $491 million over a 30-year period beginning in 2024, including the $195-million payment the first year.

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Experts have long warned that the City of Detroit could be felled again if it failed to address its pension obligations, even as the city was set to emerge from bankruptcy free of $7 billion in long-term obligations.

"Making higher contributions to the pension plans is the primary option to address the shortfall," said Matt Butler, vice president and senior analyst on the local governments team for Moody’s Investors Service. "Doing so would likely require revenue collections that outpace the city’s post-bankruptcy projections. The city has indicated that strong revenue collections may enable it to make a higher-than-budgeted pension payment this year."

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The shortfall, first reported by the Free Press, came from the firm Gabriel, Roeder, Smith & Co., which discovered that bankruptcy advisers used outdated life-expectancy tables — estimates on how long retirees will live to collect their pensions — in projecting the city’s total pension obligation.

The lower pension obligation estimate for the city used in the bankruptcy plan was based on other outdated information, including a number that failed to anticipate that the city would be hiring employees after filing for bankruptcy who would need to become part of the pension system.

The old calculations were also based on pension cuts taking effect in June 2014, instead of nine months later in March, which underestimated the liability for the pension system, officials from the firm told its Detroit pension fund clients.

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Actuaries advising the pension funds have insisted there is a significant risk of keeping to the original payment schedule and not adding more money: "Every potential action" should be pursued, Gabriel, Roeder, Smith said in an October report, to provide additional funding into the funds well before 2024.

​The revised estimate still counts on the pension funds’ assets earning 6.75% a year on its investments agreed to by the city's emergency manager and pension officials in bankruptcy mediation talks.

But the pension funds have struggled recently. A lower average rate of return over the next several years could further inflate the city’s pension fund obligations starting in 2024 and beyond.

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Those numbers are not expected to be set until the new consultant hired by the city has a chance to test the assumptions made by Gabriel, Roeder, Smith in its reports last fall. Gabriel, Roeder, Smith is also expected to provide the pension funds a new valuation report by next month that comes up with an updated estimate of the city’s unfunded pension liability.

While teachers at Michigan’s largest school district were living under a wage freeze, and more recently hearing rumors of possible payless paydays, one school employee who is also president of the local teachers union got a huge raise.

That district is the insolvent and academically challenged Detroit Public Schools, and the union president is Ivy Bailey of the Detroit Federation of Teachers. Bailey was listed as a teacher in 2013-14 and earned $70,176. Her salary shot up 31 percent to $91,877 in 2014-15.

Bailey’s compensation is listed in a state salary database of employees enrolled in the school employee pension system. It’s unclear why she was given such a big raise. Michigan Capitol Confidential puts in Freedom of Information Act requests for salary data at the beginning of each fall school year. Some union contracts call for pay increases after the school year has ended.

In 2014-15, Bailey earned $37,742 for teaching and received another $36,381 for, according to the pension database, “other professional business” and $17,754 for “employee professional services leave.” It's not clear what "other professional business" refers to but like Bailey's union pay, it does count in the calculations of her public school employee pension.

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The average salary of Detroit Public School teachers was $63,716 in 2014-15, according to the Michigan Department of Education. That's the most recent data available.

DPS has allowed individuals on the district’s payroll to do union work while clocked in as a district employee in a setup known as “union release time.” In many cases, the individual gets a union salary that can be used to boost an eventual payout from the underfunded school pension system run by the state. As of this school year, DPS had seven employees who were being paid for union work that counted toward their school pension calculations.

Speaking as a former teacher, there are lots of perfectly legit extra ways they can make more than their salary. They can coach or advise an extra-curricular program. They can work the ticket booth at football & basketball games. Some districts might have extra pay set aside for chaperoning dances. (The one where I briefly worked had it written into the contract that each middle & high school teacher had to chaperone a minimum of 1 dance per year, but others explicitly paid for that.)

Teaching summer school is a big one, although it's not clear how that would be listed on their website. If a teacher supervises Saturday School or the school-wide after-school detention, that is extra money too.

Internal subbing is also pretty generous extra pay for teachers. The unions tend to really jack up what the district must pay for internal subbing. Most teachers *hate* doing it, and the district always thinks that "next year we'll have enough substitute teachers, so we won't end up paying it anyway" so the rate skyrockets. (Internal subbing means that a teacher gives up their planning period in order to substitute that period for a different absent teacher. If the absent teacher teaches 5 classes, the district might have 5 different teachers cover during their planning periods. Regular full-time teachers, not actual substitute teachers.) Some districts have preference lists where teachers can say "I need the money, I'm happy to internal sub: call me first if there's a need" or "God no, I hate internal subbing even at the union rate of pay: call me last". So if you preferenced to internal sub you might get called a lot.

Department heads make a little extra money also, and I don't know how that would be listed.

If they're doing some other kind of district work over the summer, that might also qualify for extra pay. Offhand I'm not sure what that might be, but there could be stuff. (maybe interviewing teacher candidates?) If the school got a grant for something, there could be extra pay for teachers involved in the grant. Particularly an award of some sort might have some extra pay involved.

$36,381 seems like an awful lot of extras, but if she was picking up every extra it's definitely possible.

__________________
Originally Posted by GandalfThe thing that is clearest is twig's advice

Yep, at my wife's high school varsity coaches get I believe like $9k of extra pay, assistants about half that.

Throw in summer school options, where for example my wife was asked to teach at a local extremely large junior college for one class taking up 5 weeks and that was an extra $5k+ or so. These things can add up if someone is attempting to max out their situation.

In other examples some departments may be short staffed and ask teachers to pick up an extra class, say 6 instead of the usual 5. Figure $20k per class on average and right there you are +$20k.

So in my three scenarios someone can be at +$34k above their usual salary.

Things You Didn't Know About Detroit's Historic Bankruptcy
Nathan Bomey, author of a new book on the largest Chapter 9 filing in U.S. history, reveals the unsung heroes and true timeline of the event.

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I didn't know until reading your book that bankruptcy was being talked about in Detroit several years before 2013.

It was. In Detroit, the promises to retirees were actually broken many years before the bankruptcy process. I think the problem was [that by the time bankruptcy was considered], political leaders didn't really have the political will to make the tough decisions to avoid this type of process. So they put it off. And one factor in Detroit's bankruptcy that has been widely misunderstood is that the emergency manager law was uniquely tailored to make a bankruptcy go fast. Kevyn Orr got the job about four months before the city ultimately filed for bankruptcy. I think looking back on it, most people would agree that by the time he was installed, bankruptcy was probably inevitable.
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Were there any unsung heroes who emerged in your reporting?

Very few people know about two retirees who were extremely important to the resolution of the case: Shirley Lightsey and Don Taylor. They helped negotiate the decision to accept the [roughly 10 percent] cuts in pensions and [90 percent cut] in health care. They had to convince their constituents to vote in favor of it. And I think what they did was remarkable because it was a triumph of pragmatism and it was an example of a sacrifice that we just don't see in politics.

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Detroit taught us a lot about how pensioners and bondholders can be treated in bankruptcy. Are there any other lessons for cities here?

I think that one of the key lessons is someday the bill will come due. The promises you make will eventually be paid for by somebody. In Detroit, it was the retirees and Wall Street who sacrificed. So think about that when you set the budget.

DETROIT (AP) — A federal appeals court on Monday rejected a challenge to cuts in Detroit pensions, saying a sweeping plan that brought the city out of the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history must not be disturbed.

"This is not a close call," said Judge Alice Batchelder at the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Some retirees sued, saying they deserve the pension that was promised before Detroit filed for bankruptcy in 2013. Thousands saw their pension cut by 4.5 percent; annual cost-of-living increases were eliminated.

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Altering the pension cuts, the judges said, would be a "drastic action" that "would unavoidably unravel the entire plan, likely force the city back into emergency oversight and require a wholesale recreation of the vast and complex web of negotiated settlements and agreements."

In dissent, Judge Karen Nelson Moore said retirees at least deserve their day in court. She said Batchelder and Judge David McKeague were citing a "questionable" legal standard to dismiss the case, 2-1.

"It has real-world consequences for the litigants before us — retirees who spent their lives serving the people of Detroit through boom and bust, and who feel that the city's bankruptcy was resolved through a game of musical chairs in which they were left without a seat," Moore wrote.

Jamie Fields, an attorney for about 160 retirees, said he wanted the court to consider the merits of his argument. He contends that the bankruptcy judge had no authority to override the Michigan Constitution, which protects public pensions.

"A lot of retirees are making choices between groceries and medicine," he said.

Jamie Fields, a retired Detroit Police Department deputy chief and an attorney for about 160 retirees, said Monday that Moore, a Clinton appointee, validated his legal battle in her dissent.

“With all the people who said we were crazy for filing this, at least there was one judge who said they agreed with me. I feel some vindication that one person didn’t say I was crazy,” he said.

Fields said he will ask for the full appeals court to hear the case.

“The next step after that would be to take it to the Supreme Court. The odds of them taking it are small, but the retirees deserve it, and we have no choice but to go forward,” Fields said.

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan declined to comment at an afternoon jobs event since he had not seen the ruling. Detroit Corporation Counsel Melvin Hollowell also declined comment on the ruling.

The court’s decision to reject the pensioners’ claims comes as the city approaches the two-year anniversary of the bankruptcy this December.

In September, the city met a post-bankruptcy milestone with the state-mandated Financial Review Commission saying the city was in compliance with the commission’s annual requirements to meet financial milestones. If an audit in January confirms it, then the city would have just one more fiscal year to demonstrate good budget practices, and the state would consider lifting the demands that an outside board approve Detroit’s spending.

The ruling could be one of the last remaining legal fights from the landmark case, which had multiple appeals pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals in the past 18 months. Nine appeals listed on the docket indicated all those appeals have been closed.
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“Everyone is sympathetic to the plight of the pensioners, but think about everything that would have to be unwound,” Bernstein said. “You would have to undo the ‘grand bargain,’ deals with Syncora, with (Financial Guaranty Insurance Co). And that is an uphill battle for anyone to challenge.”

Under the deal dubbed the “grand bargain,” state money was used to support Detroit’s pension funds and donations from private foundations and the Detroit Institute of Arts were used to protect city-owned masterpieces from being sold to raise money to pay creditors.

Bernstein, who represented the top leaders of national and local foundations in the “grand bargain,” said while the justices are concerned with violations of the law, if the case was taken up and the city’s plan was undone, “Detroit is back in bankruptcy without a plan.”

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William Davis, a named plaintiff in the suit, said Monday the battle is not over for pensioners like him.

“Today’s decision does not stop or deter us,” said Davis, who heads the Detroit Active and Retired Employee Association, a grassroots group that’s critical of city government and the 2013 bankruptcy. “We will continue to fight.”

Detroit Recovery Still Shaky Two Years After Bankruptcy Exit
BY SOURCEMEDIA | MUNICIPAL | 01/03/17 07:06 PM EST
By Nora Colomer
DALLAS – Two years after exiting the biggest bankruptcy in municipal history, Detroit still faces challenges including an unexpected gap in pensions and the absence of a long-term economic plan that leaves the city vulnerable to further setbacks.
The city marked the anniversary of its exit from bankruptcy on Dec. 10. City leaders continue to hold the line on spending and, after registering a solid 2015, appear to have posted another positive year in 2016, although audited figures are not yet available.
"Frankly, there wasn't much room for the city to go but up," said Howard Cure, director of municipal bond research for Evercore Wealth Management. "For the city which is invested in autos, I am not sure if they are fully going to participate in an economic recovery or conversely just how vulnerable it is to an economic downturn."
The latest report filed on Nov. 29 from the Detroit Financial Review Commission, which provides oversight of city finances, estimates a general fund surplus of at least $41 million for fiscal 2016. The nine-member group, established under the so-called "Grand Bargain" legislation that drove the bankruptcy exit plan, is charged with ensuring that Detroit stays on course by reviewing borrowing, some contracts, and long-term fiscal plans.
The figures are based on budget projections as of Aug. 15. The city also expects to finish the fiscal year ending June 30 with a general fund surplus of about $30 million based on budget projections as of Nov. 16.
Still, worries remain in the forefront and the city’s rating remains deep in junk territory at B2 and B from Moody’s Investors Service and S&P Global Ratings, respectively.

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Under the "grand bargain," which leveraged civic foundation support to form a relief package for the bankrupt city, Detroit reached settlements with its pensioners that left intact public safety monthly checks and imposed a 4.5% cut on general employees. Their cost-of-living increases were reduced or eliminated. Retiree health-care benefits were slashed by almost 90%, allowing the city to shed a $4 billion obligation.
At the time the pension plan was underfunded by more than $1.8 billion, and retirees would have been subject to a 27% reduction. The $816 million gained from the city's bankruptcy deal reduced the reduction in benefits to 4.5%.

Challenges remain for Detroit 4 years after declaring bankruptcy
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Four years after Gov. Rick Snyder authorized Orr to file bankruptcy, the purpose of Detroit's painful financial reckoning to shed $7 billion in debt owed to creditors and retirees is increasingly evident:

65,000 new streetlights have been installed.
Police response times have been reduced four-fold to an average of 13.8 minutes.
11,847 blighted buildings have been torn down since January 2014.
Ambulance response times are half as long as they were when the city went bankrupt, dipping below the national average of eight minutes in April. Detroit has 37 ambulance rigs running during peak afternoon and night-time hours and 34 percent more medical technicians.
Detroit's unrestricted general fund finished the 2016 fiscal year with a $143 million surplus — double the city's surplus from 2015. That's in addition to $62 million the city had to keep in a budget reserve, as required by the city's court-approved bankruptcy exit plan.
The bankruptcy freed up $1.7 billion over 10 years for reinvestment in updating archaic IT systems, buying new police cars, fire trucks and ambulances.
As of March 31, the city had a general fund surplus of $51 million, with $52.8 million more cash on hand than March 2016, according to a May 30 report from the Detroit Financial Review Commission to Snyder.
The surplus has allowed Detroit to squirrel away an extra $20 million into a trust fund for a pension "funding cliff" expected to materialize in 2024, according to the report authored by the commission's executive director, Ronald Rose.

"The surplus is primarily being driven by (700) unfilled vacancies within the city," Rose wrote. "A portion of the projected surplus may be utilized for recommend fleet replacements during FY 2017."

Rose's biannual report went mostly unnoticed the week of Memorial Day while Snyder, Mayor Mike Duggan, members of City Council and Detroit's business community were gathered on Mackinac Island for the Detroit Regional Chamber's annual policy conference.

That's because unlike past confabs at the Grand Hotel, the governor and business leaders weren't sounding alarm bells about an impending financial meltdown at the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center. The bankruptcy laid bare the facts about Detroit's finances that state and city leaders, as well as labor unions, had been largely ignoring for years.

With the city's finances mostly straightened out, private investment confidence in Detroit and its government is evident with every new real estate development or housing project that's announced. It's a confidence that was largely lacking on July 18, 2013, when Detroit's bankruptcy filing triggered international headlines declaring the Motor City dead.

As Detroit's post-bankruptcy unemployment rate has dwindled to a 17-year low and city tax revenues exceed expectations, the focus has turned to addressing more deep-seated problems of rebuilding a middle class in Detroit, fixing the public schools and spreading the "comeback" of downtown and Midtown to long-neglected neighborhoods.

Those are arguably more complicated issues than getting a willing bankruptcy judge to erase decades of unsustainable promises to retirees and poor financial decisions by past city leaders.

New streetlights aren't a cure-all for sparsely-populated streets. Neighborhoods with chronically failing schools — or no school at all — aren't going to attract families back to Detroit.

Poverty, blight and abandonment outside of the vibrant 7.2 square miles of greater downtown serve as a visible daily reminder of what Detroit's historic trip to bankruptcy court couldn't immediately fix.

There's really no telling what Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos really wants in the city that will host his online retail company's second North American headquarters.

But if he's looking for a city in the Rust Belt that has already confronted its unfunded 20th century promises to municipal workers, some Detroit leaders think they've got a distinct advantage over rival northern cities, especially debt-ridden Chicago and the state of Illinois.

"One of the things Detroit needs to promote is unlike so many other communities, we've cleared our legacy costs," said Eric Larson, CEO of the Downtown Detroit Partnership. "You think about Chicago, which is great competition, but the reality is they have a very significant pension liability that they're going to have to deal with pretty soon. And that's going to be all-consuming, just like it was for us."

Simply put: Detroit already went bankrupt!

And in the process of that historic and tumultuous 17 months in 2013 and 2014, Detroit dumped $7 billion in liabilities in bankruptcy court, mostly through the elimination of an unfunded and generous retiree health care benefit.

Most pensioners received modest haircuts, and a couple of bond insurance companies absorbed the rest of the losses on money Detroit borrowed to obscure its own pension-funding crisis.

The $816 million "grand bargain," an unprecedented infusion of cash from philanthropy, corporations and state government, spared most pensioners from double-digit reductions in their monthly checks.

It also absolved Detroit of making full pension payments until 2024, giving the city a decade to get back on its feet financially as reinvestment into the center city started to pour in.

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As state and Detroit officials found out in the years running up to the bankruptcy, the city's inability to borrow money at reasonable rates affected everything from fixing broken infrastructure and ambulances to cash flow for making payroll.

Those are factors any business considering an investment in Detroit had to weigh at the time, Arwood said.

"Detroit can present a completely different picture on the future," said Arwood, CEO of Miller Canfield Consulting, a subsidiary of the Detroit-based law firm Miller Canfield Paddock and Stone PLC.

In evaluating cities, Arwood said, Amazon's brass should be asking, "Does your community have its fiscal house in order?"

"If the answer is no, that could be translated into higher taxes for you," Arwood said. "And you don't know when or how much."

The City of Detroit filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection in July 2013. How has Detroit’s economy done since then?

Chapter 9 is part of the federal bankruptcy law, providing relief to financially distressed municipal governments from creditor demands. Pros and cons of going down this route are hotly debated, and some parties warn of the threat to the local economy due in part to reduced trust among creditors.

This post is not meant to be an exhaustive analysis of the Detroit experience. But looking at employment data, it seems difficult to make the case that bankruptcy hurt economic growth.

The chart below shows total employment from 2005 to 2017 in the Detroit-Dearborn-Warren metropolitan statistical area, compared to employment in the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin metro area. The chart indexes employment in both areas to July 2013 = 1.0, which gets both areas (one larger than the other) in the same neck of the woods in the chart and also allows you to compare the Chicago and Detroit metro areas since the latter declared bankruptcy. Employment growth in Detroit has outpaced growth in financially challenged Chicago, where in recent years growth appears to be slowing down.

A year before Detroit declared bankruptcy, Stockton, Calif., declared the then-largest municipal bankruptcy in history. Comparing employment in Stockton to employment in Chicago since that bankruptcy tells a similar story.

This is only employment data, but comparing Detroit to Chicago on a broader measure of “GDP” from 2005 to 2016 (the latest year for which GDP data is available) also suggests it is hard to make the case that declaring bankruptcy hurt the Detroit area.